I've been self-employed for the last ~18 months. In the past I started two VC-backed startups, then was a PM at some later-stage companies before returning to entrepreneurship.
This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occasional consulting to bridge the gap.
I like the flexibility of this lifestyle. I'm based in NYC, but writing this from Tokyo where I've been doing a creative residence for the past two weeks.
And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system. This is because my company is registered as an S-Corp in the USA, which requires the owner to be on a salary.
I found Hacker Recommended Books [0a] on HN [0b], and began reading through the books on it, tried many books, read around 20 of them. The experience has been great, and learned many new things. Some books have expanded my mind.
If you are into books, I highly recommend searching HN with the simple keyword "books", and filter using "Ask HN" tags [1], or simply by "books". This is how I choose almost all of my English books now (I am trilingual and can read more languages)- even non-technical books. I have been doing this for more than two years, and I really like HN for books recommendations.
Many years' worth of high quality reads can be found on HN threads related to books. They are goldmines.
EDIT: There is also Hacker News Books [2]. Check out their Top Books of All Time section [3].
I handle it by collecting quotes that tell me to knock it off. I've since started to focus on just the things I really care about:
The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.
― Aristotle
Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention
― Richard Feynman
"Information is not truth"
― Yuval Noah Harari
If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not a wise man.
― Rumi
Dhamma is in your mind, not in the forest. You don't have to go and look anywhere else.
― Ajahn Chah
Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world,
but in the process he loses his soul.
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The wise man knows the Self,
And he plays the game of life.
But the fool lives in the world
Like a beast of burden.
― Ashtavakra Gita (4―1)
We must be true inside, true to ourselves,
before we can know a truth that is outside us.
― Thomas Merton
Saying yes frequently is an additive strategy. Saying no is a subtractive strategy. Keep saying no to a lot of things - the negative and unimportant ones - and once in awhile, you will be left with an idea which is so compelling that it would be a screaming no-brainer 'yes'.
- unknown
This suggestion is humorous, but absolutely true: Potty Training In 3 Days.
Before having children, I thought I was fairly empathetic and introspective, but raising a child helped me realize how superficial those traits in myself were.
I'm being completely honest when I say this book made me a better leader and project manager - having a better understanding of the motivations of others, incentivizing those looking to you for guidance based on their own goals/desires, providing those with tools they need to succeed, and taking a macro view of a problem and allowing those under me to flourish and find creative ways to solve problems that take advantage of their strengths and idiosyncrasies.
I'm in no way suggesting that you infantilize those around you, just that teaching my toddler to shit opened my eyes to the way I approached problems, and Brandi Brucks' book helped me approach things differently with great success!
import yeti will allow you to search for atleast imported goods (and if its made in usa, then atleast it lets you fetch records of its sourced parts) , https://www.importyeti.com
This lets you search through the entire import records, and find out suppliers for various brands, note: some companies intentionally use a different name under which it imports the products (rare), but still is be a good place to start looking.
Nope. There are classes among the ultrawealthy too:
* Lower-class ultrawealthy have billions on paper, but no liquidity. Think of a founder sitting on a pre-IPO unicorn.
* Jeff Bezos is lower-middle-class ultrawealthy. He has wealth, but he can't use it, since it's locked up in Amazon. If he sold it all, Amazon stock would collapse.
* Bill Gates is middle-class rich. He has "free" wealth which he can do with as he pleases.
* Upper-class wealthy have wealth in political structures (think Saudi princes for a visible example, or low-key formerly noble European families who hold massive amounts of land). Their wealth is now structured so it can survive economic collapses, wars, and so on, and they can command real power through global political influence.
It's really about how much you can use your wealth for power and influence.
Just skimming some of the replies here makes me think you will get better advice on the Bogleheads forum [1]. Despite the minimalist appearance it is actually a great place to get sensible financial advice. I would start with the wiki page on managing a windfall [2], then search through older replies to similar questions. This kind of question gets asked there a lot, so there should be some recent threads.
It's probably not what you meant, but I recently created a weekend project bot that scans facebook for apartments rental ads.
Thanks to this bot, I landed an opportunity I wouldn't have catch otherwise, saving me 6,000$ a year.
Assuming I will hold my new apartment for 3 years, this is a net savings of 18,000$.
I haven't sold anything, but yet I created something that "generated money" for me.
Or you have an employee who buys their health insurance on your state's ACA exchange.
There's even a decent chance that they can get an ACA subsidy. To get a subsidy they need to get their MAGI below about $49k (I'm assuming they are single...someone else can do the numbers for families). MAGI is for most people income - HSA contribution - retirement plan contribution.
With an HSA and an IRA they can knock up to almost $10k off their MAGI, which means they can take a part time job paying up to $59k/year and still get a sweet ACA subsidy.
If your company has a 401k, and they work enough hours to qualify to contribute to that (1000 hours/year, I believe), using that instead of an IRA would let them knock around $24k off MAGI, meaning they can take a part time job paying up to $72k/year and still get a subsidy.
The way ACA subsidies work is that even if you barely come in under the MAGI limit, it is usually pretty substantial. You might expect that as you get closer to the limit, the subsidy decreases--and you would be right--but it isn't the kind of gradual decrease to 0 that you would probably expect. No, it is a slow decrease right up to the cutoff then it drops to $0.
1. This week's 6.6M new jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.
2. This is incremental to the 3.3M new jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks.
3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February [1], so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 (~10M incremental jobless claims = ~6%). That number is likely low and continuing to increase, as new jobless claims do not account for gig workers and many state unemployment sites have been inundated by these claims resulting in site crashes and people unable to file claims. In addition, layoffs have almost certainly continued between 3/28 and today.
4. The consensus estimate for this week's jobless claims was ~3.76M jobless claims, and the 6.6M actual claims blow the consensus estimate out of the water. That said, some analysts such as Goldman Sachs had estimated ~5.5M joblesss claims. Goldman Sachs estimates that unemployment will peak at ~15%. [2]
#1. Trinet for full-time remote/distributed workers. I've spent countless hours researching Global PEOs and reviewing their often poorly written contracts. If a reputable service existed that allowed us to hire in any country without having to form our own corporate entity in that country, we'd be ready to sign yesterday. Unfortunately, all existing services are either:
* Too new (There are promising upstarts, but they usually don't operate their own entities and it seems risky to route all our IP ownership assignments through a tiny company)
* Too expensive (massive markups on what should be a standardized service)
* Too incompetent (One PEO sent us a contract for a Canadian employee that assigned their IP in accordance with US law. It's facepalm-bad sometimes).
I do consulting, the kind I do is irrelevant because there are others with high bill rates too (I know of some iOS devs that make $2,500/day). I have friends who are Java devs making $250/hr. They're not dummies but they aren't exactly Linus Torvalds or Chris Lattner either.
Since you asked, I advise companies on how to implement certain development practices, things like DevOps, TDD, etc.. Before you totally write this off, hold your horses. I'm not saying this is THE path for you. It's one of many. I just happen to care a lot about how we work together to make software and I always found myself drifting into those discussions on the team.
I'm based in Houston, TX. I charge $3k - $5k per day. I usually pay my own travel expenses. I haven't been charging that for long and the first time I submitted a proposal at that rate I almost threw up I was so nervous. I work usually two weeks per month. I usually travel to my clients. I also sell support contracts where I offer them unlimited Slack and 1-2 calls per week. I offer them coaching, feedback, guidance. Sometimes it's pairing on building out a Jenkins pipeline, sometimes it's just explaining why "change fail percentage" is a good metric to track backed by industry studies.
I have a friend who couldn't join us for BBQ this weekend because he's traveling to SF just to visit with a former client who paid him something like $100k for a handful of Java classes he taught. I'd have to look at the invoices to know the exact amount and I have a call coming up. He went through my company. The nice thing is once you set up a company properly it becomes a vehicle for all sorts of financial endeavors. People think creating a company is scary and complicated and can really fuck you up. That's wrong. It's trivial to create a functioning company and the upkeep just to keep it compliant is absolutely minimal if it's incorporated in a state like Texas.
If you've read this far, here's the golden nugget. I wish someone had told me what I'm about to tell you.
1. Follow the things that really interest you, not in your head, the things that make your heart pound. Maybe that's picking up certain types of stories in the sprint, or helping a coworker with a certain kind of bug. While your energy will come and go, that thing that makes your heart pound will always be there. It's connected to your calling, which you might not understand until you're in your 40's (like me).
2. Always ask for more money. Ask nicely, and after you deliver something of value. The company ALWAYS can afford to give you more. If giving you $20k more will bankrupt the company then your company is dying and you're going to be out of a job anyway. People who aren't business owners (myself included at one time) do not comprehend the decision flow business owners take. Ask for the money until they don't have any more. It is more ethical than letting them waste it on another kegerator for the office. Programmers in particular have a very skewed sense of the value they provide. Even a mediocre programmer is worth 10x his salary. You have no idea how valuable you are to a smart business person. Instagram had 30 employees when it was sold for $1B. Think about that.
3. Be polite and talk about the things that interest you with others. Share what excites you. It will be genuine and people will like that. It will link you up with the kind of people you should be linked up with.
4. Only invest time in the people with the most potential. Don't waste your time having coffee with people who aren't passionate, smart, hard working, or creative. This means avoid shit-magnets/pin-cushions. Within 10 years these high potential people will pay off for you in multiples. For me they've become great friends and have fed me most of my business. Back then they were just "I like this person".
5. Show your work. Imposter syndrom is lies you tell yourself in the absence of valuable feedback. Make things, no matter how flimsy or unfinished, and show them to people. A Russian guy once told me "never show unfinished work to an idiot". So show your work, just don't show it to idiots. Every single time I've had the courage to show smart people things I was tinkering with it has led to an opportunity.
6. Be courageous. Learn to do things you know to be wise, even when they're scary.
7. Be patient. It's the journey not the destination.
I know this all sounds like horse shit but how many times have you heard these exact things from "successful" people before? Did you ever stop to ask yourself why? Maybe they're good principles. Maybe they actually work. If I told you the "path" to where I'm at and you tried to follow it you'd most certainly fail because the world is so complex that the correct answer (in discrete steps) is only knowable after the fact. The only thing you can do is be guided by principles that bear good fruit. Follow your heart, ask for more money, be polite, invest in potential, show your work, be courageous, be patient.
From the bottom of my heart I wish you the best. If you ever would like to chat I'll happily hop on a zoom and share as much as I can with you. I want you to find as much joy and financial reward in your endeavors as I have found in mine. God bless.
The secret is don’t base your job search on blindly submitting resumes to applicant tracking systems.
When I am looking for a job, I send my resume to my curated list of local recruiters followed up by a phone call. We talk about what they have available and what I am looking for. I have enough of a history with them that they make sure that my resume shows up on top of the hiring managers stack.
My success rate from submitting my resume to being invited to an in person interview is 100% unless the req was closed. My non rejection rate is close to 100% (I’ve taken myself out of the running because I found a job.)
(3) As you work for clients, keep a sharp eye for opportunities to build "specialty practices". If you get to work on a project involving Mongodb, spend some extra time and effort to get Mongodb under your belt. If you get a project for a law firm, spend some extra time thinking about how to develop applications that deal with contracts or boilerplates or PDF generation or document management.
(4) Raise your rates.
(5) Start refusing hourly-rate projects. Your new minimum billable increment is a day.
(6) Take end-to-end responsibility for the business objectives of whatever you build. This sounds fuzzy, like, "be able to talk in a board room", but it isn't! It's mechanically simple and you can do it immediately: Stop counting hours and days. Stop pushing back when your client changes scope. Your remedy for clients who abuse your flexibility with regards to scope is "stop working with that client". Some of your best clients will be abusive and you won't have that remedy. Oh well! Note: you are now a consultant.
(7) Hire one person at a reasonable salary. You are now responsible for their payroll and benefits. If you don't book enough work to pay both your take-home and their salary, you don't eat. In return: they don't get an automatic percentage of all the revenue of the company, nor does their salary automatically scale with your bill rate.
(8) You are now "senior" or "principal". Raise your rates.
(9) Generalize out from your specialties: Mongodb -> NoSQL -> highly scalable backends. Document management -> secure contract management.
(10) Raise your rates.
(11) You are now a top-tier consulting group compared to most of the market. Market yourself as such. Also: your rates are too low by probably about 40-60%.
Try to get it through your head: people who can simultaneously (a) crank out code (or arrange to have code cranked out) and (b) take responsibility for the business outcome of the problems that code is supposed to solve --- people who can speak both tech and biz --- are exceptionally rare. They shouldn't be; the language of business is mostly just elementary customer service, of the kind taught to entry level clerks at Nordstrom's. But they are, so if you can do that, raise your rates.
-edit, I’m actually not sure if that’s the original, I’m doing a search online and can’t easily find the original audio tapes which were recorded in the 90s. I advise you listen to the audio version.
So I had the pleasure of watching a non-evil social engineer at work once. He thought about humans like I think about networks. He treated LinkedIn like a network map. He treated secretaries like firewalls.
He started with the coop students. He'd pretend to be from the university the coop student went to. Of course the call gets forwarded. Of course he does a full interview with the coop student and learns their tech stack. Coop student doesn't know better so questions like:
"We're trying to make sure we train our students with the technology that is actually used in the field. Are they giving you guys Macs or PCs? PCs, eh? Windows or Linux? Great. Oh, one last thing, Dell is sponsoring a new building; any chance you guys are on Dell? Oh, Lenovo; ok. No problem. Can you transfer me to your boss [the head of IT] I have some questions for him."
Bossman, who they know isn't within earshot of the coop because they asked the student if they had enough space from their boss before the interview, picks up the phone.
"Hi Mr. Bossman I'm Steve, your new Lenovo rep, calling about some great new gear we have that we think you guys might really enjoy. Studies are showing that high density pixel laptops are better for worker productivity, but before we do a full pitch to Frank [the decision maker at the company, which we learned from LinkedIn / interviewing the coop] we'd like to make sure it is what you guys in IT would really want. Can we send a couple over for free and get your comments about what you think?"
Bam. Root of the head of IT. Because you control the actual laptop you throw in a GSM card and not even network monitoring would set off alarm bells. Took one phone call that wouldn't have been possible without LinkedIn.
CaterCow | https://www.catercow.com | Brooklyn / NYC / New York, NY | ONSITE | $110k - $160k+, 0.3% - 2.0% equity, health care, 401k, bonuses, revenue share, etc.
I'm Chris, the cofounder and CEO of CaterCow. Previously I was the second employee (engineer) at Airbnb and left to build CaterCow. Come get in on the ground floor of our engineering team as we execute our plan to win the entire group food ordering market.
If you're a great full stack engineer with wonderful business & design sense, I'd love to chat. Email me at chris@catercow.com with "HN Who's Hiring September 2018" in the subject.
Things that make us different: Profitable, infinite runway, 85%+ owned by founders and employees, no VC (we raised less than $200k 5 years ago, but have grown profitably since then), amazing 8 person full time non-technical team (Sales, Ops, Customer & Caterer acquisition, photographers), best in industry unit economics, very strong 5 year history of increasing revenue and profit growth, flexible and experimental view about travel & work.
Looking to hire 2 people immediately who think hard work and excellent software are the most powerful tools to dominate markets.
The last time we posted in this thread we ended up hiring @tgriesser (https://github.com/tgriesser) as Engineer #1 so you’ll be working directly with the two of us. We’re interested in building a team with a wide variety of skills and viewpoints and are open to all sorts of expertise. Right now we would favor engineers with particularly modern front end / design / UX sensibilities, a strong history of growth hacking, or experience leading multiple successful product features.
===
Please email me if you're interested in the above :)
chris@catercow.com with subject "HN Who's Hiring September 2018"
Would either you, or the post above you, mind sharing where you ended up getting your sheets from?
My wife is obsessed with nice sheets, but feels like what we got from Amazon isn't what they said it was. I didn't even realize until now, how that might be true. So I'd like to buy some nice sheets from a reputable source. I don't mind waiting for shipping.
Without knowing any more about what you are trying to do, I would just recommend a framework we learned at business school that I keep coming back to. It's for when you're looking at developing or altering a product. It's really just a checklist, and it's super simple, but it's effective. Can be tweaked to understand how different brands are attacking a market.
5Cs, STP, 4Ps
5Cs: Just list out a bunch of facts to get acquainted
- Context: what are the wider trends (e.g. millennial habits, etc.). This is where you start wide
- Customer: what 'job' is your customer trying to do? Who could that be? What is your unit of analysis: a person, an occasion, a ___ ??
- Company: what are you good at?
- Competitors: Who else is trying to serve that job?
- Collaborators: Who could be a partner? (Vendor, complementary service, channel partner, etc.)
STP:
- Segmentation: What are the different customer segments? What are the dimensions that make two {people, occasions, etc.} different in a meaningful way
- Targeting: Which are the viable and nonviable segments? Who's your target?
- Positioning: What is your:
-- POP/POD: point of parity/point of difference
-- Frame of reference: who are you stealing share from?
-- Reasons to believe: why would someone believe that you can deliver?
4Ps/marketing mix:
- Product/brand: what is your product? what's it's functionality? what's your brand?
- Price: level and structure.
- Place: distribution channels. Pull vs. push.
- Promotion: where will you advertise? What's your message?
To your question: "How do you even get to do that?" You ask. My current enterprise job was not offered as remote. It was advertised as an in-office job. When the job was offered to me, I asked if I could work remote. Due to how hard hiring is for my role, I was told it'd be no problem (and I had other offers; lesson for another thread, "always negotiate from a position of power").
The below resources come to mind as places to start (no affiliation).
This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occasional consulting to bridge the gap.
I like the flexibility of this lifestyle. I'm based in NYC, but writing this from Tokyo where I've been doing a creative residence for the past two weeks.
And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system. This is because my company is registered as an S-Corp in the USA, which requires the owner to be on a salary.
[1] https://www.contraption.co/essays/digital-product-studios/